Author: Jonathan Miller

Why do I take the time to mention “real estate appraisers” and “real estate appraisals?” instead of just “appraisers” and “appraisals”? Personal property appraisers and business appraisers aren’t required by any state to follow USPAP, don’t pay anything for licensing and certification fees to any state, and are not subject matter experts on anything to do with real estate at all, ever. But… the Appraisal Standards Board and Appraiser Qualifications Board are chock a block full of non-real estate appraisers. Didn’t TAF/ASC arise from problems in the real estate profession? Was it ever the intent of the original remit for...

When I read the announcement that Fifth Wall funded a relatively new startup called ALOFT, I and many of my peers were confused on what the value proposition actually is. Backed by a VC, including some of the biggest… In addition to Fifth Wall, Aloft’s backers include VC firms Andreessen Horowitz and MetaProp, Zillow and Pacaso co-founder Spencer Rascoff, Built CEO Chase Gilbert and Doordash executive Gokul Rajaram. …means that this funding is very expensive for ALOFT but they are trying to disrupt a very low-margin industry. I thought of the following acronym translation, not aimed at the management team,...

The ASC Wants And Has The Funds To Make USPAP Free! And More! This press release is seismic for appraisers so please read it: Press Release: Appraisal Subcommittee (ASC) Board Approves Fiscal Year 2022 Budget of $9M including nearly $5M in Grant and Technical Assistance Funding With the context of TAF’s bat-shit crazy letter, here are some key changes in the relationship between TAF and ASC: ASC wants USPAP to be free, enable diversification of the ASB and AQB which are NOT diversified and never have been and they want to study alternatives to the insanely wasteful two-year USPAP update...

The current administration is addressing the lack of diversity in housing valuation head-on with the formation of an interagency task force on Property Appraisal and Valuation Equity (PAVE). Here are the details of the PAVE Task Force. They just had their first meeting and this is a serious effort unlike the silliness of TAF’s bureaucratic actions of the past year that were nothing more than window dressing to the lack of diversity problem within the appraisal industry. Incidentally, The Appraisal Foundation is not part of PAVE Task Force. Keep that in mind when you read their bat-shit crazy letter again and think about the fact that...

…since we know retail mortgage lenders, they will demand appraisers take their own photos but accept MLS or no photos in bifurcated “appraisals.” An appraiser shared these modifications with me: Exterior photographs Clear, descriptive photographs showing the front, back, and a street scene of the subject property and the front of each comparable. The subject and all comparables must be appropriately identified. Acceptable photographs include original images from photographs or electronic images, copies of photographs from a multiple listing service, or copies from the appraiser’s files. Photographs of comparable rentals utilized in the Small Income Residential Appraisal Report (Form 1025) are not...

It was a bit surprising how little attention was paid to the announcement of Madoff’s death in prison. Good. His returns were amazingly linear and there were a number of people that kept calling out the ponzi but he was close with regulators. Because my firm is located in NYC, we’ve ended up doing appraisals in matters related to the post-Madoff tragedy/cleanup. All those people who trusted in him that had their finances destroyed – still hard to process. In the aftermath, we appraised the properties of his wife, brother, both of his sons (the apartment where one sons committed...

For all the talk about how important appraisers are to risk management by the GSEs, we really aren’t. There is a compelling blog post using AEI data by Ryan Lundquist over at Sacramento Appraiser Blog. Appraisal waivers have really exploded in recent years – especially during the pandemic. But how many are there exactly? Let’s look at actual numbers to walk away with some perspective. These stats are from January 2021 from AEI. QUICK SUMMARY: 47.4% of all Freddie Mac loans had a waiver 44.5% of all Fannie Mae loans had a waiver Waivers are far more common during refinances...

What is the actual reason USPAP was extended without warning for an additional year? Don’t get me wrong. I am all for longer USPAP cycles or doing updates on an as-needed basis in an industry that changes very little. As I’ve mentioned before, Dave Bunton of TAF said during the ASB public call on February 19th that USPAP was extended another year because of COVID – yet that makes no sense. Zoom calls are ubiquitous these days, so COVID is not a legitimate reason – we can argue that TAF is MORE efficient with Zoom. I bring this up specifically...